KPXB 49 Thread & Memories

[ChannelTwoNews]

Wanted to start a thread for this station. Not necessarily for anything that's happening today because it's basically a pass-through for ION and the associated subchannels that are tied to it, but rather for how it was in years past. 

Started watching it in the very early 90s and I think they finally added it to our cable (Jones Spacelink in Rosenberg) around 1991 or 1992. The picture quality wasn't the best since it was being pulled from their LPTV transmitter that was simulcasting closer to us in Missouri City. It was milky and occasionally on the verge of being black and white. They also had a habit of running their station ID twice - once in english and then a separate one in spanish. In hindsight, their switcher was ancient as there was a slight jump in the image when that specific set of videos ran - closer to something you'd see in the late 70s or early 80s.

Local businesses actually did advertise on the channel as well, even though most of the programming was in spanish and the ads generally were in english. It's not entirely without precedent though - in the first few years KXLN was on the air, IDs were bilingual and on occasion some english language clips sometimes appeared as filler.

They aired Galavision around the clock which was cool since a lot of the time it was Noticias ECO and it was essentially getting a 24-hour news channel over the air in spanish. 

In the mid 90s they switched to infomercials - in english. Infomall or InTV. Lots of Mike Levey and John Parkin trying to sell just about anything available. Also recall a Danny Bonaduce hosted infomercial that was supposed to be set up like the Late Show with David Letterman, complete with a band, but was selling a self defense program where he basically got beat up by a grand master of some form of martial arts. 

About the same time (maybe 1995-97?) they had an interesting block on Friday mornings. I distinctly remember a show called Namaste America airing at 7:30 AM and they would profile the latest in southeast Asian music and primarily Bollywood previews. Interesting mix of Hindi and English throughout. After that was an hour of Japanese news and business programming from Fuji TV. I don't remember if it was live or prerecorded, but I always enjoyed the Japanese commercials. 

In the late 90s, they were converted into a PAX O&O and ran the network's programming. While it was mostly a straight run of that network, they did have some local features. They ran an hour-long review of job openings in the Houston Chronicle at 6 AM for some time. They also aired rebroadcasts of KHOU's evening newscasts for a while as well - which was somewhat different as a number of the PAX affiliates rebroadcast their respective NBC affiliates. They also aired a brief run of a game show called 100% that was really fairly cheap - it was narrated/hosted by Casey Kasem but you never actually saw him - only the contestants. Found out later it was an exceptionally limited syndicated program and lasted maybe a season or so.

I think they were also the station that ran HISD News Today (HISD's week-in review show) at 5:30 AM on Saturday mornings. Most of the reporters for that show were alumni from the other stations (Thom Dickerson, Ben Wilson & Norm Uhl from what I remember). Maybe it was KUHT. 

Since the late 2000s, there hasn't really been anything local other than the station ID at the top of the hour.

The sole exception was from that period into the early 2010s, where I seem to recall a random show at 1:30 PM on Sundays. So random it was that it either interrupted an hour-long show or it had to be padded out by infomercials. It was hosted by a "Dr. Azeem" who basically discussed the Quran for 30 minutes. The commercials (yes, there were commercials in that show) were generally all for businesses in the Royal Center at Bissonnet and Kirkwood including his practice and the event venue - Royal Palace - where once there was a Palais Royal. It disappeared when Ion started to run marathons of single shows for its programming.

Just wanted to put this out there. Always felt like I was the only person watching this station since not many people seem to recall it from back in the day at least.